18 February, 2017

Nine young children killed: the full details of the botched US raid in Yemen

Despite
the growing reports of failure – and despite the death of a Navy
SEAL, and the destruction of a $70 million Osprey aircraft –
Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer has continued to insist that
the mission was a “successful operation by all standards.”

by
Namir Shabibi and Nasser al Sane

Part
6 - US counterterrorism ops in Yemen

The last
time US special forces launched a ground operation like this one was
in November 2014. It was a rescue mission, trying to spring an
American and a South African taken hostage by al Qaeda. Tragically
the mission failed and the hostages were killed.

Though US
boots have been on the ground in Yemen off and on since 2002, drones
and manned jets lead the hunt for AQAP.

More than
162 strikes have left 815 people dead, including 134 civilians (in
the last three years of Obama’s presidency civilian deaths in drone
attacks dropped considerably). Hundreds of al Qaeda fighters have
been reported killed, including a succession of men chosen as the
group’s emir.

In 2011,
when the Arab Spring reached Yemen and unseated its dictator Ali
Abdullah Saleh, al Qaeda took full advantage. It turned from a small
terrorist group, focussed on blowing up airliners over the US, to an
insurgent group governing a chunk of southern Yemen.

With this
transition to insurgency, AQAP became the only group in Yemen to
actually profit from the 2011 uprising, according to the recent
International Crisis Group report.

In May 2016
US soldiers were deployed to an airbase in the south-western province
of Lahj alongside Yemeni troops, coordinating US air strikes and
Yemeni ground forces against AQAP.

Together
Yemeni soldiers and US air power unseated AQAP from its stronghold
but only succeeded in driving the terrorists into the mountains. It
has become embedded in the ongoing civil war in Yemen, setting itself
up as a Sunni bulwark against the Shia Houthi militias which have
occupied the capital since 2014.